Provocative, funny and sobering.

Washington Post

American Follies

In the seventh stand-alone book of The American Novels series, Ellen Finch, former stenographer to Henry James, recalls her time as an assistant to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, heroes of America’s woman suffrage movement, and her friendship with the diminutive Margaret, one of P.T. Barnum’s circus “eccentrics.” When her infant son is kidnapped by the Klan, Ellen, Margaret, and the two formidable suffragists travel aboard Barnum’s train from New York to Memphis to rescue the baby from certain death at the fiery cross.

A savage yet farcical tale, American Follies explores the roots of the women’s rights movement, its relationship to the fight for racial justice, and its reverberations in the politics of today.

Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist

Big Other Book Award Finalist

Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection

cover image of American Follies

Paperback

ISBN
9781942658481

Ebook

ISBN
9781942658498

Preview American Follies at Big Other.

portrait of Norman Lock
Charles Giraudet

Norman Lock is the award-winning author of the dozen volumes in The American Novels series, as well as other novels, short fiction, poetry, and stage and radio plays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and has been longlisted twice for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He has also received writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.

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Praise for American Follies

Ragtime in a fever dream. . . . When you mix 19th-century racists, feminists, misogynists, freaks, and a flim-flam man, the spectacle that results might bear resemblance to the contemporary United States.

Library Journal (starred review)

A thrilling, unnerving portrait of 19th-century America. . . . One part novel of ideas, one part madcap adventure.

Kirkus Reviews

Dark, carnivalesque. . . . American Follies features lavish period details and unsettling alternative world building, warping expectations and standing out for its rapier wit.

Foreword Reviews

Raucous, fantastical. . . . [An] imaginative exploration of late-19th-century America’s cultural tensions.

Publishers Weekly

Lock nimbly explores race, gender, and identity through a historical lens while displaying a joyous love of language.

Booklist

Brings to life the two suffragists, Anthony and Stanton. . . . A thoroughly worthwhile read.

Historical Novels Review

Superbly crafted. . . . Absorbing and memorable.

Midwest Book Review